4'22''

Four minutes and 22 seconds is the exact duration of a 400-foot roll of 35mm film: "reel time." It is also the length of this documentary, about a performance by William Raban at BFI Southbank on December 6, 2008. asks what happens when you leave out all the usual frills from a film screening. What are you left with? No acrobatic camerawork, no flashy backdrops, no actors, no high drama, no shoot-outs, but just a structured film, made by a director for an audience. Raban holds up a mirror to the audience, in a space containing just a screen, a lamp, the noise of the projector, and some shadows on the screen. The conclusion: we still experience the film in the here and now, even if all the creative and economic forces behind more commercial variations on this shadow play do everything in their power to sweep us away to there and then. is not about representation, but is rather a mildly humorous presentation of the screening of film itself.